Beating cheaters

[pscheaters]

The first step to beating any opponent in any game is learning and understanding everything about them. To do this requires giving your opponent a certain degree of respect, regardless of how much you dislike them or how low they seem to stand relative to the norms of civilised society.

In my other non-PlanetSide-related life, I am a postgraduate research student with plenty of prior industry experience. My specialisation is in information security and a bit of forensics. Game hacking is simply a side-interest because some of the techniques are common to infosec. And to put a cap on the chest-beating, what I know pales in comparison to many lecturers and professionals who specialise in this field.

To keep this short, I will focus on 2 of the harder forms of cheating techniques to beat, because of technical, resourcing, legal, constitutional or reputational hurdles. This is my personal view and if you are aware of other advanced techniques, please let me know (I am interested, but buffer overflow do not count unless ...).

My 2 personal favorite game hacking techniques are:
1. memory injection
2. datastream hacking

Memory injection is designed to change the behaviour of the game client in order to provide an unfair advantage. Most aimbots these days are based on memory injection techniques. Because it is piggy-backing on the main game client program/process, it uses the game's main process register and unless you know what you are looking for, you'd never find it. It can tamper both static data values in memory (easier to detect) and also change program steps and behaviour entirely (much more advanced and requires reverse engineering).

I would like to diverge into [ABC] because it is one of the cleverest service models I have come across. [ABC] basically provides a client that is locked to one PC (which maximises their revenue because it makes pirating or sharing the cheats difficult). Additionally, none of the cheat programs are actually saved as a physical file on your PC. This beats file validation checks that most game clients perform these days. What the [ABC] client does is download the program into memory and waits for your main game process to start. As soon as it has detected that the game process has started, it will inject the cheat code into the main game process.

This link, (R Kuster 2003, "Three Ways to Inject Your Code into Another Process"), amongst others, provide an excellent discussion into how memory injection is done:
[Link Removed]

The other advantages of [ABC]'s model is that it serves to protect its customer base and their apparent "digital assets" in the game world. Every single time a cheat is being used, the user has to authenticate and download a copy of the cheat that resides only in memory.

Soon as some unfortunate customers are banned, [ABC] is able to centrally disable the distribution of the cheat in order to "protect" the existing customers that are yet to be banned from the banhammer. To counter this, some GM's in certain games (e.g. EVE Online, CCP) tend to collect evidence over a period of time and then ban a spate of accounts in one hit. I am certain SOE already knows who are the PS1 hackers.

I have also seen [ABC] constantly evolve their cheats and the speed at which they are able to evolve suggests that [ABC] actually have a bank of various working cheats for certain games. The cheats are not themselves completely original which suggests that netvortex ([ABC]'s maintainer), himself or his team, is particularly skilled at reverse-engineering and machine language programming. He picks up a working cheat that has been released and adapts it for [ABC]'s distribution model. Like viruses, the faster cheats are able to evolve makes it harder for game developers to stay in pace.

Also, looking at netvortex's post on [ABC]'s PlanetSide, he is also extremely smart to make his cheats not obvious and not easily abused, so that [ABC]'s do not register so highly on the grief-scale that game developers are forced to release a countermeasure. Once countered, it creates additional time, work and costs for netvortex to evolve or develop a new cheat.

The other more insiduous side to [ABC]'s model is that he can pretty much run anything on your computer by changing the code that you will download and run (how sure are you that its the PlanetSide cheat code?). He has your computer's GUID and if I were him, I'd log IP numbers that you regularly use as well. In order to avoid being IP-identified by netvortex, I've had to make this post from a netcafe, but I am pretty sure he can still identify me if he really wants to. Yes, please do not disrespect these people. Infosec people of any-colour hats are scary and operate in a much different world than the one you assume to know.

Putting myself in netvortex's shoes, [ABC] is simply an amazingly profitable business proposition. It is something he is good at and he is simply cashing in on it. There is clearly a demand for it and he is simply supplying the goods and services to meet that demand. He does not care about what people think and most likely, do not have the time to read all the [ABC] forum-bashing (and there is plenty of that to go around).

It is also important to remember that game developers are bound by certain legal, constitutional, reputational and privacy constraints. Being outed as spying on gamer's PC even in a limited form is particularly bad for business because of the current tendency of media to demonise and whip up a complete brown-snow-storm over it.

I believe [XYZ] uses the same model (please correct me if I am wrong). [ABC] on its own provided plenty of data and amazingly eye-opening insights into the current state of game hacking.

Ok need to catch my breath after all that. I will post more about datastream hacking in my next post.

[Raymac]

And go fuck yourself.

[Furret]

So are you gonna get to the part where you suggest how to beat them or are you not done glorifying cheaters yet?

[pscheaters]

Datastream hacking, especially passive techniques, are near impossible to detect. The spying/snooping/listening code just have to be able to sit somewhere in the route between your game client and the game server and in-so-doing, does not even have to reside on the same PC.

This form of hacking is synonymous to what is commonly referred to as man-in-the-middle attacks in infosec.

Passive datastream hacking is usually designed to provide the user additional intelligence or information that they are not supposed to have, for example, the infamous radar hacks.

To minimise detection, ideally it should be run on a router PC displaying information on a different monitor. A classic example of this is Excalibur in Dark Age of Camelot.

Active datastream hacking is when the datastream is manipulated or duplicated. For example, the cheaters single bullet can be duplicated into 2.

Fortunately, many game servers these days implement datastream encryption and server side validation constraints.

This form of game hacking technique are not common these days because of the additional hardware and system configuration requirements. It is also necessary to program a new client to display the snooped information. The most undetectable variant of DAOC Excalibur required a Linux PC set up as a gateway router with its own display.

I think these days, you can get away with having everything on the same PC and perhaps even using same monitor/display via DirectX overlays but this makes the cheat much easier to detect.

DAOC GM's had to create fictitious stealthed targets and observe the behaviour of the suspected radar hacker in order to catch them out. Again, this is very costly in terms of time and manpower for the game developers to deal with such cheaters.

[pscheaters]

So are you gonna get to the part where you suggest how to beat them or are you not done glorifying cheaters yet?

Yes I will come to this but I have to admit that I do not have all the answers yet. Going to take a short break from forum posting for now.

[ColRipper]

Personally, my favorite way to beat cheaters is with a baseball bat. This method is effective for any kind of cheating, not just planetside cheating.

[Peacemaker]

Ban hammer incoming!

[FastAndFree]

This could very easily pass as viral marketing. No matter the context, you are advertising how good these cheats are and disclosing the name so anyone who read this could go and find it. It is fortunate that probably the only people who are still around to see it are not interested in getting such an advantage
At least you warned about the dangers too, but I am sadly spiteful enough to wish for anyone who tries it to get what's coming for them.

Profit-oriented cheat distribution services might make it harder to get rid of cheaters in general, but do they make it harder to get rid of them from a specific game? After all, now you just have to make it not profitable to sell cheats for your game so they focus on the rest instead.

Why are we even talking about this? It should not be our task to look for cheaters. And hopefully in PS2 it won't be

[Death2All]

wat

[CidHighwind]

wat

^^^

[morf]

As long as the game client runs on the player's machine, there will always be cheaters. Sure you can take measures to detect it, and ban the offenders. Companies have entire departments devoted to this. But cheating is a profitable business, so you end up in this arms race where as the detection methods get more sophisticated, so do the cheats.

The only way to 100% get rid of cheaters would be to put the game client in the cloud (i.e. OnLive) - but that's not happening anytime soon.

[Fate]

Sounds like an ad for [nameremoved]. I really don't understand why people cheat. The whole reason to play is for the challenge. When you cheat you remove any challenge that was there in the first place, just making the game more stagnant and less interesting.

[pscheaters]

Not really advertising for [ABC]. The reason why I brought up [ABC] is because my current thinking on how to beat game hacking is actually to use [ABC]'s same distribution and application service model to distribute anti-cheat and cheat detection code.

Like [ABC], the anti-cheat code is only downloaded to memory (not to file) and run when the client receives a specific request from the game server (why limit cheat detection to game activation trigger). This also allows the anti-cheat code to be precision-targeted on specific suspect players.

If for some reason the game is rejecting the anti-cheat code, it is possible that the game is already compromised.

This gives the game developers a few advantages:
1. the anti-cheat code is not sitting in a file on the client somewhere that allows cheat developers to reverse-engineer and develop counters
2. with this live code model, the game developers are able to evolve their anti-cheat as fast as the cheat developers ... whoever evolves faster wins this "arms" race
3. the anti-cheat code is run client-side on the suspected cheater(s) which takes the load off server-side performance
4. it does not have to be run all the time and on every one, which benefits client-side performance
5. it is more resource-efficient than hiring round-the-clock GMs to moderate the games, fight cheat with anti-cheat tools that collects all the data/evidence you need for you

Finally, this will sound controversial. I would go so far as suggest warn and counsel instead of ban. It goes with my system of belief that rules should first seek to rehabilitate people into becoming better citizens than outcast them or condemn them forever to a life of crime. Introduce a 3-strike rule so that the punishment is commensurate with the crime and repeat offenders get increasingly severe punishments meted out. Why do this? When players are rehabilitated, it starts to sap the demand for cheats. When you kill demand, you also kill the supply. In the end, everyone benefits from the experience of a healthy player base.

The ideas I am suggesting here are not new and may have already been considered or even implemented by PS2's development team. It is just that no game seem to have pulled it off successfully and there are many of us that want to see PS2 succeed where many other games have failed.

[Bags]

Finally, this will sound controversial. I would go so far as suggest warn and counsel instead of ban. It goes with my system of belief that rules should first seek to rehabilitate people into becoming better citizens than outcast them or condemn them forever to a life of crime. Introduce a 3-strike rule so that the punishment is commensurate with the crime and repeat offenders get increasingly severe punishments meted out.




http://i.imgur.com/jvgQm.png

[SuperMorto]

Why call yourself PSCheaters? Hmmmm, that provides a good link for google!

And there is no such things as being beat from a cheater!

[NewSith]

Wow! Cheating is cool! I'm gonna go buy some now. Wrap up two, please...


On serious note:

1. I'm with Raymac on this.
2.
I would go so far as suggest warn and counsel instead of ban.
What is the point of this in F2P game?
3. The only real solution is a spyware-anticheat that keeps FILES and HEX-code checked and replaced in real time.

[Justaman]

Wow! Cheating is cool! I'm gonna go buy some now. Wrap up two, please...


On serious note:

1. I'm with Raymac on this.
2.

What is the point of this in F2P game?
3. The only real solution is a spyware-anticheat that keeps FILES and HEX-code checked and replaced in real time.

Doesn't do anything to people who use hacked versions of the "spyware" as you call it, as their's just say everything is A-OK at all times.

There is no way to use anything that requires trust of the client side.

The only way to stop someone from cheating is to not send them the network data, that would let them "cheat".

There is no anti cheat software on earth that cannot be hacked/rendered useless. If it exists on the client end, it can be altered.


Never trust anything that is transmitted from the client side, regardless of what its from. And never tell the client more than you intend them to know. Don't expect that in this day and age simply putting graphics(an in game wall?) and some software(anti-cheat programs?) between the players is enough to stop a cheater.

Sony trusted the client end when it came to PlayStation 3 security. Look where that got them. XD

[NewSith]

Doesn't do anything to people who use hacked versions of the "spyware" as you call it, as their's just say everything is A-OK at all times.

There is no way to use anything that requires trust of the client side.

The only way to stop someone from cheating is to not send them the network data, that would let them "cheat".

There is no anti cheat software on earth that cannot be hacked/rendered useless. If it exists on the client end, it can be altered.


Never trust anything that is transmitted from the client side, regardless of what its from. And never tell the client more than you intend them to know. Don't expect that in this day and age simply putting graphics(an in game wall?) and some software(anti-cheat programs?) between the players is enough to stop a cheater.

Sony trusted the client end when it came to PlayStation 3 security. Look where that got them. XD

Lemme elaborate my suggestion.

There's no way of fighting cheaters because it's human nature, I don't deny that. People will always pick up a 100$ banknote, if they find it lying on the ground. There's almost no people who will try to find an actual owner, while they can rather keep it to themselves. If you want to obliterate cheating you need to add death sentnce for it to the international law and a special service to catch cheaters. But that's something that will obviously never happen.

I'm just proposing that there should be some sort of extra barrier for cheating, so instead of 1 hack you'll need to get two or even more. First of all, I know some hackers (hackers, not cheaters), who create hacks, but they themselves rarely use those except for testing them out. Instead they're making money off of it. People who actually use hacks are usually young people, sometimes not even familiar with forum bbcode, and they do it because it's easy and rather cheap. They also find it entertaining. But having a difficult system of using hacks will, in my opinion, reduce (at very least slightly) the amount of those cheaters. That's what I mean.

[Justaman]

Lemme elaborate my suggestion.

There's no way of fighting cheaters because it's human nature, I don't deny that. People will always pick up a 100$ banknote, if they find it lying on the ground. There's almost no people who will try to find an actual owner, while they can rather keep it to themselves. If you want to obliterate cheating you need to add death sentnce for it to the international law and a special service to catch cheaters. But that's something that will obviously never happen.

I'm just proposing that there should be some sort of extra barrier for cheating, so instead of 1 hack you'll need to get two or even more. First of all, I know some hackers (hackers, not cheaters), who create hacks, but they themselves rarely use those except for testing them out. Instead they're making money off of it. People who actually use hacks are usually young people, sometimes not even familiar with forum bbcode, and they do it because it's easy and rather cheap. They also find it entertaining. But having a difficult system of using hacks will, in my opinion, reduce (at very least slightly) the amount of those cheaters. That's what I mean.

So what your saying is "don't make it easy so that fewer people do it".

Problem with that is, hackers "make it easy". Thats the whole point, they make it easy so that anyone can use it, for people not like them.

Your essentially saying, only let hacking be possible if they use convoluted methods that make the users less willing to try it. But still, the hacker will make a nice little .exe, and all you have to do is click it and it will go through all of that stuff that makes it hard, making it just as easy.

Closest thing they could do is have bans in place to scare people. But its F2P, so meh to that.


If the client is only told what its intended for the player to know, then:

You can't have a hack for radar if the server never sends information on people who aren't on your radar.

You can't have a hack to see people through walls/distances if the server doesn't send you information on people you don't have line of sight with.

You can't have a hack to see infiltrators if the server never sends information on their location.

They just won't work.

The only thing they can do is aim bots. But those can be detected server side, so you don't have to worry trying to trust a client side anti cheat program thats been hacked.

The hardest part for a person to get/use hacks, is finding where to get them. That's it. Difficulty = find hack/cheat. Difficulty of using a hack will always be as easy as the hacker programmed it to be.

[Shogun]

can someone tell me why this pscheaters guy isn´t banned already for promoting cheat-services?

please lock this thread and delete the hack-service names from the OP
or delete the whole thread and ban this idiot!

i love this forum and hammas policy of no censorship, but the promotion of cheatservices that kill onlinegames is just too much!
and the service mentioned will surely go for planetside 2 as well! (as they already feature swtor and bf3)

delete this shit as soon as possible. don´t give those fucking cheat-sellers more google hits!

[Nephilimuk]

hmmm rehab for breaking a EULA - lmfbo

Enforce the EULA end of problem.

As for the viral advert to cheats online well played

Bollocks argument though and yes I did read the lot. Its the thin end of a wedge and a step towards legitimacy which is kind of FCUKed up as it defeats the object of the cheat as they then become a "feature" of the game.

(i would delete this thread before it is spidered or exclude the URL for the post from any spiders if you can Admins)

[Tikuto]

http://www.robinhoodsplayground.com/tonyuk/News%203/ban%20blk%20ops.JPG

[pscheaters]

The only reason why I proposed a different angle to the banhammer because CCP (the game developers) tried mass bans in EVE Online and that didnt work, another game that I love and have since quit because unless CCP does something, the botting operation run by the Russians has gone so out of control that the growth of the bot industry is outpacing the ability of CCP to ban accounts and destroy assets acquired through bots and other third party apps.

To put this into perspective, an average player (with a life) would struggle to generate the same amount of in-game currency in 1 month that a single bot can make in 1 day.

[Crator]

Why call yourself PSCheaters? Hmmmm, that provides a good link for google!

And there is no such things as being beat from a cheater!

This is a good point. Should have called yourself Dick Tracey or Dexter :)

There's no way of fighting cheaters because it's human nature, I don't deny that. People will always pick up a 100$ banknote, if they find it lying on the ground. There's almost no people who will try to find an actual owner, while they can rather keep it to themselves.

Bad example, how would you determine who the $100 belongs to? Advertise it to everyone in the room currently? So what happens when you get two or more folks come up saying that it is their money? Obviously only one person lost it, right?

[Nephilimuk]

The only reason why I proposed a different angle to the banhammer because CCP (the game developers) tried mass bans in EVE Online and that didnt work, another game that I love and have since quit because unless CCP does something, the botting operation run by the Russians has gone so out of control that the growth of the bot industry is outpacing the ability of CCP to ban accounts and destroy assets acquired through bots and other third party apps.

All major power blocks in EVE use bots and the isk generated from most large alliances is "widely distributed!". Don't believe all the propaganda shoved up on EVE24 or spread by what was Goonswarm or the Northern Coalition. Both profit from this as do other alliances. At best they have been known to turn a blind eye to botting or worst directly profit (Russian, PL in fountain, AAA, most major power blocks). It is a problem but cheating in a mmofps is very different from cheating in a game that can net you a primary income. As for posting links to cheat sites that is at best naive at worst well you can read the feedback.

Let SOE handle this and if they don't take the appropriate steps then people will vote with their feet. That impacts the bottom line so I am sure they will be passionate about it.

[ringring]

I alwaays wondered, or at least during the period that rickrolled was running rampant, why SOE didn't fight back. The only think they appeared to do was to ban the account after the damage had been done.

However, the hackers by attacking SOE's product are clearly damaging SOE's business amd therefore could be seen to be industrial sabotage.

So why didn't SOE take a legal route and sue [nameremoved]? Identify the individuals and take them to court?

Beats me.

[Crator]

How do you know they didn't?

[Shogun]

delete this post, ban the original poster!

zero tolerance against cheaters and especially to people who advertise commercial cheatsites!

[Rumblepit]

I alwaays wondered, or at least during the period that rickrolled was running rampant, why SOE didn't fight back. The only think they appeared to do was to ban the account after the damage had been done.

However, the hackers by attacking SOE's product are clearly damaging SOE's business amd therefore could be seen to be industrial sabotage.

So why didn't SOE take a legal route and sue [nameremoved]? Identify the individuals and take them to court?

Beats me.

what people dont understand is that the f2p business model dose very well for people in Korea, china, because if you get caught hacking you get ARRESTED....it is illegal to hack, therefore not many people do it. 0$ overhead needed to prevent hackers , means they make allot of money.

when this model is implemented in the states where hacking is not illegal, well we know what happens. they have to spend lots of money on hack prevention, lots of money on admins to police the servers, but now they not making as much money as they should???? so then your left with very few people/admins shoveling shet against the tide trying to keep the game as hack free as they can. and the game and the community suffers for it.


there are very few laws that prevent this. 0 in the states

[SgtMAD]

yea, that's just what the US needs to do, pass some silly friggin law that makes cheating in a video game illegal,hell we need more laws and then we can hire even more ppl to enforce this great new law enforcement tool,use it in the fight against terrorism.

[Ailos]

As contrary as this sounds with the rest of the forum regulars: the guy does have a point, and brings up a good way of combating cheating, which is using the hackers' own tools to beat them at their game. Numerous hackers and virus creators currently work in the infosec industry because they're the best at it. And obviously, it works.

However, the name, the link, and the specific advertising is unnecessary. I don't think anyone on these forums would ever actually use a cheat, but these forums ARE pretty close to the top Google results for Planetside.

Also, cheaters are not people that can be reasoned with, that's why they're cheating in the first place. They don't care about rules, don't care to follow them, and they certainly aren't going to respond to rehabilitation attempts in any way other than cheating again. Ruthlessly enforcing the EULA is part of a comprehensive strategy to deterring cheating, and that means a permanent ban for any confirmed hacker.

Here's an interesting idea: many components of a modern computer come with unique identifiers, which include CPU, hard disk, video card, network card, or TV tuner serials. As part of a normal install process, the installer may check for the presence of any and all of those numbers being present, and permanently encrypts those into an SOE database and associates them with your account. If you're ever 'convicted' of cheating, each of those serials gets blacklisted, and if you ever want to play the game again, you'll have to swap out each of those components. Make that fact very clear, very plain, and very simple in the EULA. That won't stop people from creating easy hacks for PS2, but it will deter people from buying them, which will in turn diminish the market for sales of hacks (you get banned once, and in addition to paying whatever it is you paid for the hack, now you have to buy a new card, hard drive and processor, which at least in the next few years, won't be cheap for this game (you could buy a graphics card for $30 but it'll run PS2 pretty shittily if at all).

EDIT: Also, hacking in the US IS illegal, but not in the same way as it is in Asia. Whereas in Asia, there are specific laws that prohibit it, in the US, we have much stricter intellectual property enforcement, and a much more defined idea of a contract. When you buy a piece of software or play a game, in explicitly sign a contract with the software manufacturer when you click the "I Agree" button (that's in the EULA, if any of you ever bother to actually read through them). The EULA is a binding contract between you and the manufacturer where you promise not to cheat and you acknowledge the fact that if you're caught cheating, they can legally prosecute you. The problem comes with the fact that in the US, you need an actual warrant before you can arrest someone, while in China and Korea, police can arrest you on a whim. We would have to pass laws that speed up arrests and decrease the court costs, but albeit, that's pretty un-American and is very much unconstitutional.

[ringring]

yea, that's just what the US needs to do, pass some silly friggin law that makes cheating in a video game illegal,hell we need more laws and then we can hire even more ppl to enforce this great new law enforcement tool,use it in the fight against terrorism.
I wouldn't have thought a new law would be necessary, having said that there is a law for hacking into computer networks in the US and people have been prosecuted for it.

All I am saying is, hackers cause actual damage to companies such as SOE and I am sure it can be represented in money term via drop in subscriptions -> loss income.

[Shogun]

@ ailos:
it doesn´t matter if the guy does have a point, because this point could also have been made without actively advertising pay2cheat sites on the community forums of a mmo game!
this post has cheatservice names in it, that should not be spreat in gamerforums!
and if he really was against cheating he would have posted without naming those sites so that even the dumbest cheater who cannot even use google would find them.
viral marketing for those services, nothing more! paired with some statements against cheaters to fool others and to not be too obvious.

[Ailos]

@ ailos:
it doesn´t matter if the guy does have a point, because this point could also have been made without actively advertising pay2cheat sites on the community forums of a mmo game!
this post has cheatservice names in it, that should not be spreat in gamerforums!
and if he really was against cheating he would have posted without naming those sites so that even the dumbest cheater who cannot even use google would find them.
viral marketing for those services, nothing more! paired with some statements against cheaters to fool others and to not be too obvious.
I'm rather inclined to agree with that point.

[basti]

what people dont understand is that the f2p business model dose very well for people in Korea, china, because if you get caught hacking you get ARRESTED....it is illegal to hack, therefore not many people do it. 0$ overhead needed to prevent hackers , means they make allot of money.

when this model is implemented in the states where hacking is not illegal, well we know what happens. they have to spend lots of money on hack prevention, lots of money on admins to police the servers, but now they not making as much money as they should???? so then your left with very few people/admins shoveling shet against the tide trying to keep the game as hack free as they can. and the game and the community suffers for it.


there are very few laws that prevent this. 0 in the states


Wonderful, posting rumors and crap and selling them as true.


There is no law in Korea that gets cheaters arrested. There never was.


And btw, laws dont do shit. A law is not stopping me from flying over to the US, buying a gun, shoot ya in the foot, and flying back home. ITs a piece of paper doing nothing.
A law only allows certain people to enforce them. If a law isnt enforced, its pretty much useless.

And enforcing a "no cheaters" law is pretty much as dump as SOPA.

[Shogun]

i can´t understand why it seems to be so hard to sue the cheat-service providers.
that would be the best way to go! making money by selling a service with the only purpose to violate eulas of gamecompanys must be against some law!

sony was able to fight the usb jailbreak sticks for the playstation3 and even got buyers lists to contact most of the endusers who bought them. so why are there official websites that offer eulabreach services openly and charge money for that?

[Pillow]

I've always wondered why do the game companies let third party sites earn money from their products by sabotaging?
Why don't the game companies just gang up and sue the shit out of the sites that are leeching?

[NewSith]

Bad example, how would you determine who the $100 belongs to? Advertise it to everyone in the room currently? So what happens when you get two or more folks come up saying that it is their money? Obviously only one person lost it, right?

That's exactly why it is a good example.

i can´t understand why it seems to be so hard to sue the cheat-service providers.
that would be the best way to go! making money by selling a service with the only purpose to violate eulas of gamecompanys must be against some law!

Because EULA is only eligible for copywrite, nothing else.

[Ailos]

I've always wondered why do the game companies let third party sites earn money from their products by sabotaging?
Why don't the game companies just gang up and sue the shit out of the sites that are leeching?


Because EULA is only eligible for copywrite, nothing else.

EULA is a contract between you and the company and as such, it will always start out in civil courts, whereby the accuser has to pay all costs, and it stays that way until either the suit is won or evidence of criminal wrongdoing is uncovered, when the suit becomes a criminal case and is handed to the district attorney, and it basically starts over.

The only speedy way for a company to prosecute you is if you've created an account with them and they have your "signature", but you can only be prosecuted for damages relating to your violation of this contract, which usually can't be much. Furthermore, more often than not, American courts tend to be reasonable with settlements - your accusers are unlikely to receive a settlement for $500 million from you if you're a janitor. (Courts will on occasion award outrageous amounts, but it's rare and done as a precedent.) Thus, unless you've actually done something criminally wrong, it's cheaper for them to just blacklist your ass, and move on.

Companies can't sue hackers (the guys that make the commercial kits, not script kiddies) until they have hard evidence they've infringed their intellectual property, something that's pretty hard to come by. They also don't have the EULA shortcut because most often, those guys aren't customers of said company. That's not to say that companies don't sue those that infringe licenses or crack software, but even after that, we come back to the fact that we deal with Asia (including Russia), where probably more than half of the world's hackers come from, and where the concept of intellectual property isn't understood in the same sense that nobody knows what free speech is.

To most Chinese and Indian people, intellectual property is a bullshit term made up by American businessmen to milk more money. They view it that way for a number of reasons, but it's part of a growing problem in Asia. As a professional research engineer, I read scientific articles on a daily basis, and 90% of everything published nowdays comes from Asia, but only 1% of those Asian articles are actual worthwhile studies. Almost all others are pointless, mindless ripoffs, thinly disguised plagiarism, and sometimes even flat out fraud. They will frequently claim invention to something they're openly acknowledging as having been developed by someone else. No Asian can become a true world superpower until that concept of intellectual property, and respect for invention and innovation are enshrined not just in their selectively enforced laws, but become a part of their cultural morale.

That said, there's the logistical problem of extradition. If SOE tracks down hacks to a guy stemming from China, they may sue him, they may prosecute him here in the US, but chances are, China won't extradite him here, and won't really cooperate with prosecuting him in China. Their government is not interested in promoting the interests in an American subsidiary of a Japanese company.

Hackers and cheaters are created through capitalist forces - forces of demand, and rarely obey any laws. Combating them requires similar methods. If you make the penalty of cheating very hefty in the game, you'll decrease demand for cheats, which will decrease the demand for hackers to create the cheats. The cheaters themselves aren't logical beings, but the hackers simply follow the money. Get rid of the money, and they won't go there.

That is the reason that bills like the SOPA act must not become laws. Hackers, cheaters, criminals and black markets will ALWAYS exist as long as there is more than 1 human on this planet. Legitimate businesses must and will follow laws, while criminals never will. Net neutrality and freedom from censorship and central control allows companies to defend themselves and combat criminals legally, by their own means. It is the 21st century equivalent of the Second Amendment (for those not in the U.S., the constitutional right to bear arms in self-defense).

[Shogun]

the OP has removed the name of the cheatersites. thanks for that!

would a moderator please sweep the thread and edit out the other mentionings in replys, too?

[pscheaters]

it doesn´t matter if the guy does have a point, because this point could also have been made without actively advertising pay2cheat sites on the community forums of a mmo game!
this post has cheatservice names in it, that should not be spreat in gamerforums!
and if he really was against cheating he would have posted without naming those sites so that even the dumbest cheater who cannot even use google would find them.
viral marketing for those services, nothing more! paired with some statements against cheaters to fool others and to not be too obvious.

The link I posted is an award-winning article in CodeProject. CodeProject is a site that discusses programming techniques. CodeProject does not distribute game hacks. On the other hand, it would have far more stringent policies than this forum.

Reading that link will not help you or anyone hack PlanetSide or any other game for that matter but it will give you an idea on the current state of game hacking and how it is done. There are so many more steps and knowledge that you must first acquire before you can reasonably hack a game that I have intentionally left out.

Closing your minds to knowledge or living in denial that sophisticated cheats exists, will not make the cheats go away.

[pscheaters]

the OP has removed the name of the cheatersites. thanks for that!

would a moderator please sweep the thread and edit out the other mentionings in replys, too?

Hamma removed the link to CodeProject. I personally edited out the name of the sites because of your childish overreaction.

[Shogun]

zero tolerance against advertising for commercial gamebraking cheatsites is not childish.

it´s bad enough those sites exist! but it´s very bad to make them so easy available by putting their names on communityforums, where every interested douchbag would see them;
in a post that glorifies the cheatsite by explaining how secure they are and how little danger there is to get detected and banned.
great job, if you wanted to reduce the cheater problem by telling every kid in town where they could buy an undetectable cheat. very thoughtful approach, indeed!

[SgtMAD]

this guy is consumed by cheating, he knows way too much about all the crap and even links sites,I'll bet he is one the cheaters he is talking about,he is getting off drawing attention to it all, look at the walls of text he puts up

[pscheaters]

zero tolerance against advertising for commercial gamebraking cheatsites is not childish.

it´s bad enough those sites exist! but it´s very bad to make them so easy available by putting their names on communityforums, where every interested douchbag would see them;
in a post that glorifies the cheatsite by explaining how secure they are and how little danger there is to get detected and banned.
great job, if you wanted to reduce the cheater problem by telling every kid in town where they could buy an undetectable cheat. very thoughtful approach, indeed!

Undetectable? Not really. SOE knows who the cheaters are.

Little danger? Letting a program download any code, trusting it and letting it run on your computer is a little danger?

Advertising? Get real. PS1 is a game with a use-by-date. The key audience I am really targeting are PS2 developers. And I really want this information out there to emphasise the fact that these cheats exist and PS2 needs to do something about it.

You think censorship on this forum will stop people finding it? Ok go censor porn from the internet then or get the Chinese government to make Google censor porn from its search engine.

People are a lot cleverer than you think they are. You are not protecting the game in any way by hiding the fact that these cheats exists.

[pscheaters]

this guy is consumed by cheating, he knows way too much about all the crap and even links sites,I'll bet he is one the cheaters he is talking about,he is getting off drawing attention to it all, look at the walls of text he puts up

Thats true :) I am feeding on your weakness :evil:

[pscheaters]

Here throwing you guys some candy, something I found a few days ago looking up beliy77, one of the confirmed cheaters.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198041702585

He is dumb enough to put his real face online (hoping to score some chicks off the net perhaps) and his buddy cheater HOMLOG in his friends list too.

[Shogun]

you just dont get it.
i know that i cannot prevent that people can find those sites, but it´s a whole different story to even promote them, what you did!

if you wanted to reach the devs and tell them about those sites, you would use a discrete way of communication, and for ps2 there are many ways to do that without telling every coincidental viewer of the forum where to find the cheats!

i guess if you find an exploitable bug in a game you go and tell the world about it, instead of using a /bugreport to tell only the devs... and still feel like you are the hero and helped the game because when a lot of players abuse this bug, the devs would surely react faster.

[pscheaters]

if you wanted to reach the devs and tell them about those sites, you would use a discrete way of communication, and for ps2 there are many ways to do that


Have you actually tried doing this? I have...

You missed my point entirely also. My point is in order to beat those cheat services, game developers may have to consider using the same techniques and distribution model as the cheat services to distribute anti-cheat, as live code injected into process. Think about it ...

You are panicking over the fact that some "douche-bags" will spend money on cheats for a game that is in its last days. Shouldnt you be more concerned that PS2 is designed and equipped with the means to combat these cheats?

[Shogun]

You are panicking over the fact that some "douche-bags" will spend money on cheats for a game that is in its last days. Shouldnt you be more concerned that PS2 is designed and equipped with the means to combat these cheats?

totally wrong. i never panicked about planetside 1. never even mentioned it. i am talking about the cheatsite you promoted, which will start working on a planetside 2 cheat as soon as the beta starts! maybe planetside 2 is not yet featured there, but it will be for sure!

[Justaman]

you just dont get it.
i know that i cannot prevent that people can find those sites, but it´s a whole different story to even promote them, what you did!

if you wanted to reach the devs and tell them about those sites, you would use a discrete way of communication, and for ps2 there are many ways to do that without telling every coincidental viewer of the forum where to find the cheats!

i guess if you find an exploitable bug in a game you go and tell the world about it, instead of using a /bugreport to tell only the devs... and still feel like you are the hero and helped the game because when a lot of players abuse this bug, the devs would surely react faster.

Dude, seriously, seriously dude, seriously.

The man is trying to enlighten the ignorant masses to real cheating, and all you people do is jump to conclusions.

Other than using a name, he's done nothing but explain how it works so it can be understood by the average laymen. But apparently a single name drop is enough to burn him at the stake. Go find a bridge and hide under it.

Putting the name of the service wasn't the best of idea's, but he's still human. Stop treating his post like it needs to be flawless to be considered positive.

OP's post in a nut shell from my perspective :
There are more intricate and undetectable ways to cheat than you average people are aware of. Here is an explanation so you understand how it works even better than, the average things you're used to seeing. Now that your aware, discuss and raise awareness to help mitigate this type of cheating from the get go rather than trying to chase cheaters around for eternity.

[Shogun]

take in account that he even created a new psu account with cheat in the name to do this... that´s the way all illegal sites do their advertising. open new accounts on forums, community sites, social networks or even comment sections and spam as hell until the banhammer hits.

[pscheaters]

lol guilty by name ... march me off to the gallows right now ... i'm ready to die

[Ailos]

Dude, seriously, seriously dude, seriously.

The man is trying to enlighten the ignorant masses to real cheating, and all you people do is jump to conclusions.

Other than using a name, he's done nothing but explain how it works so it can be understood by the average laymen. But apparently a single name drop is enough to burn him at the stake. Go find a bridge and hide under it.

Putting the name of the service wasn't the best of idea's, but he's still human. Stop treating his post like it needs to be flawless to be considered positive.

OP's post in a nut shell from my perspective :
There are more intricate and undetectable ways to cheat than you average people are aware of. Here is an explanation so you understand how it works even better than, the average things you're used to seeing. Now that your aware, discuss and raise awareness to help mitigate this type of cheating from the get go rather than trying to chase cheaters around for eternity.
+1

I am not a complete forum worm, but I haven't seen his name in any thread other than this. Furthermore, his posts are direct replies to our responses, and thus, I wouldn't consider it spam.

Don't like this discussion? Don't participate. The names have been edited and links removed. Google doom has been averted. Otherwise, this is quickly degenerating into a flame war rather than a meaningful and constructive thread.

[Justaman]

take in account that he even created a new psu account with cheat in the name to do this... that´s the way all illegal sites do their advertising. open new accounts on forums, community sites, social networks or even comment sections and spam as hell until the banhammer hits.

I personally think its understandable. He wanted a forum name not related to anything he uses online. Doing so makes simple detective work useless to track him down if the service he is trying to counter becomes disgruntled. Professional hackers are capable of things you wouldn't think possible, so in turn, you would never think about/consider when you form an thought.

Why not use a name that is relevant to what the subject, your soul purpose of creating it for, is based on?

Public location (netcafe) to post from + fictitious name = anonymous = safe (for the most part)

[Jimmuc]

The only way to defeat your enemy is to know your enemy :cool: i for one found this information very interesting.

[Hamma]

Links to external cheating sites will not be tolerated on this forum. You can claim whatever bs you want to I suppose but that doesn't change the fact it is not tolerated.

The developers know about cheating, they know about these websites. It's their job to know so they can work to prevent it.

Stopping cheating all-together is impossible. Instructing people how to cheat is only making the problem worse.

Let's at least attempt to be somewhat constructive in this thread otherwise it will end up locked. ;)

[pscheaters]

Links to external cheating sites will not be tolerated on this forum. You can claim whatever bs you want to I suppose but that doesn't change the fact it is not tolerated.

The link is to CodeProject ...

The developers know about cheating, they know about these websites. It's their job to know so they can work to prevent it.

Yes they all know about it that is why these cheat services do NOT work and do NOT exist.

Stopping cheating all-together is impossible.

So stop trying?

Instructing people how to cheat is only making the problem worse.

Instructing people how to cheat does not require instruction. Providers of the cheat services already do that. What I have done is dissected how these cheats work and discussed some of the issues game developers face.

Let's at least attempt to be somewhat constructive in this thread otherwise it will end up locked. ;)

Ok being constructive in this thread is to discuss or provide ideas on how to counter this cheating scourge that is breaking many people's enjoyment of the games. In order to be constructive, Hamma why don't you share with us what you think is the solution instead of just saying it cant be done?

Simply putting your big foot of authority into something that you do not fully understand doesn't help.

Money doesn't come easy these days and to spend $x per month to get hammered by people who use cheats, when the game floundered for years after SOE lost interest in maintaining it, is not right by the player community.

Many years ago, I could do nothing except sit and watch helplessly as the game is ravaged and eventually unsubbed. Will this happen again with PS2 and do I just sit by and watch it happen again?

[SKYeXile]

Links to external cheating sites will not be tolerated on this forum. You can claim whatever bs you want to I suppose but that doesn't change the fact it is not tolerated.

The developers know about cheating, they know about these websites. It's their job to know so they can work to prevent it.

Stopping cheating all-together is impossible. Instructing people how to cheat is only making the problem worse.

Let's at least attempt to be somewhat constructive in this thread otherwise it will end up locked. ;)

Just shut it down already, Hackers have been the bane of SOE last year, they're going to do everything they can to shut them down.

[Alanim]

While I've never played the original planetside, I am looking forward to planetside 2.

I'm unsure of the hacks/or even how the game is played but these ideas should work.

For Aimbotters who wallhack, or just normal wallhackers, this assumes 0 wall penetration if the player is legit, add bots in a box inside the mountains/ground/etc. The box will also be bulletproof from the outside so even if someone glitches under the map, they won't be able to hit the person. If any of these are killed the player who killed them are banned.

For people who re-texture their character models so that they can see people through walls/etc, places moving ghost characters on pre-defined paths and make them 100% invisible with no hitbox, with enough of these they'll be at a disadvantage, only use this if it wouldn't be a strain on the server.

Speed hackers are a bit harder to passivly fight against, same for fly hacks.

[basti]

Have you actually tried doing this? I have...

You missed my point entirely also. My point is in order to beat those cheat services, game developers may have to consider using the same techniques and distribution model as the cheat services to distribute anti-cheat, as live code injected into process. Think about it ...

You are panicking over the fact that some "douche-bags" will spend money on cheats for a game that is in its last days. Shouldnt you be more concerned that PS2 is designed and equipped with the means to combat these cheats?

You are an idiot. A big one.


[name removed] and such sites are no cheat providers. They are scams. Scams that get money from idiots who believe in that crap.
Some of them have actually cheats and dont just rip your money out, and very certain sites even have up to date stuff, but most of them dont provide anything, or just outdated stuff.


Where cheats come from is a rather different source. And the devs know about said sources.


Now, GTFO PSU!